Xenon Star

[travisbmoore]

“Xenon Star”
Game Concept by: TRAVIS BRYANT MOORE

Ok Now I got it posted in the right place. This is my game Idea before X-Hyperion.

CH1
Xenon Star is a game concept set in the year 2200 in our Milky Way Galaxy. Human kind has set forth from the earth colonizing new worlds and solar systems. You are a young inexperienced Star Drifter.
As a star drifter you have a small ion propelled ship. You can buy and sell goods or take mercenary missions or become a pirate. You can even work your way up to space station owner, terra form your own planet. Or dare to own your own solar system by making a Xenon Star or Phosphor star.
A Solar Rejuvenator is a rare alien artifact that cost 3,000,000c and can convert any black hole, neutron star and black dwarf into a medium star like our in the sol system.
A Xenon star is a small white dwarf star that you dump xenon gas into, so it emits brighter white light. It is the cheapest star you can make and bright. A phosphor star is a star like Xenon star except mercury vapor is deposited on the star to make UV rays. Then you use a halo phosphor to make like a giant fluorescent light that is super bright. It is best for solar power plants on near by planets. Both types may make some planets warm enough to terra form. Or Earth class planets. Claiming a white dwarf star is easy, you simply deploy id beacons in an uninhabited system. Id beacons cost 10,000c for 10. Deploy one near the star, and any uninhabited planets. They then broad cast the system as belonging to you and if you already have a business license your system is registered on the galaxy map. You may also hire a Large Hauler ship to deploy docking rings on planets and you simply have a large cargo ship deploy a Outpost kit on a planet.
Making Credits is a very complex activity. Not only can you do the same things in free lancer but you can buy bonds that pay up to a 5% per Month.
Or up to as much as 0.1% per hour. In real time that is 5% an hour, 0.1% minute. Or faster depending on game speed or slower to as low as 5% a day and 0.1 an hour. Fast game speed only affects the speed of the stock market and bond interest rate. Escort and courier missions are in real time of minutes, seconds and hours.
Stocks are probably the best way to make money. All stocks at the start of a new game start at 10.00c per share. Depending on the success of the company you make money and a dividend based on the companies total profit. Some companies will fail swiftly and some do extremely well. While other stocks are always steady with a very small dividend about 1% the price of the stock. Stocks are not directly part of the actual game world. Except the top in system companies that are always stable. You may sell your own stocks if you buy a business license or select corporation option in the game menu. Corporation difficulty starts a player out with 5,000,000 credits at 100% owner ship of your shares or 10,000,000 credits at 50% ownership of your company. If lower than 50% owner ship a company can use your money to buy stocks. In hard mode you just have a small star drifter and 5,000 credits. Medium difficulty starts you out with a small freighter and 10,000 credits. Easy difficulty starts you out with a Large freighter and 100,000c. Expert difficulty starts you with a small fighter and 2,000c.
As you sell your stock you must keep in mind to keep over 50% of your stock so you maintain control.

CH 2

Travel in the game is simple. You have trade gates that provide direct travel to parts of a system that have main stations and planets. You and move about the system indirectly using your ships engines. Jump gates connect different systems. Jump holes are used by smugglers and pirates. Most systems have at least a jump hole. But if you upgrade your ships reactor enough you can buy a jump drive to use.
Jump drives use 100MW (One hundred mega watts of power) per jump and take one second per 1MW of power to recharge. Jump capacitors hold charge. It is possible to buy up to 1,000MW of energy storage in bigger ships. Small ships usually us the trade gates, and jump gates and holes. Some parts of a system can not be accessed by the trade gates. That’s when upgrading your reactor and engines is important. Asteroids can be mined usually all contain at least iron, nickel and cobalt. You ships engine is the only way to get there but out side the main trade routs are mining stations and pirate bases and commerce stations.
CH 3

Mining Stations are good places to buy ore cheaply if you don’t want to blast asteroids for ore. Pirate stations sell illegal goods and rare ores and gems for a price. And alien goods, and alien artifact upgrades it you can afford them. Commerce stations are simply trading stations with on board factories and farms and venues and housing. You can even buy space on a commerce station to build a small residence to charge rent, a hydroponics farm to sell food to the station for a small profit. And add venues such as fast food chains and stores and pet shops where people can buy cute alien critters that are harmless. Science research stations are out of the way places guarded by a battle ship. And marked with beacons that can only be seen by pilots with favorable relation on their id markers. Science and research stations are good places to buy the latest and greatest ship upgrades and alien artifacts and alien ship upgrades. These upgrades are superior to ordinary ship upgrades, because they usually don’t use energy in their energy weapons and the little add on parts that make power for your ship without using h-fuel called ZPM (Zero Point Module) energy sources and electric engines that move without using fuel but use subspace displacement and include jump drives that are self powered and shield generators that work well against all weapon types and so on.

Ch 4

Building space situations is a bit difficult. It requires you having large cargo hauler dock at a special ship yard to load a docking bay. Once you have the docking bay loaded you move it to the position you want by having the hauler follow you. Hail the ship and select follow, and or drop commands, the cost to haul is 1,000c per jump gate.
Once you have your Docking bay positioned you dock with your docking bay. Once docked you click one station owner icon. This lets you select what you want on your space station. You can build hydroponics farms, factories (that make goods to trade, ship upgrades, housing, venues, and Commercial hubs if built in an asteroid field and so on. Commercial hubs contain a little of all stations and has it’s own merchant to buy what it needs and sell goods for profit.
Commercial hub cost 2,000,000 credits but make many time that over the long term. They cost the same as an outpost and work the same.
When you landed after installing a docking ring you unpack your outpost using the unpack icon on the landing site. This makes a small out post and equips the planet with a bar, a trade center to buy and sell goods, an upgrade center to buy weapons and upgrade for your ship and a hanger to buy new ships. And new add-ons for owners. These are ship designs and research, for new products and ship parts and weapons.
Build on the colony and select democratic govern for automate The outpost will grow to become a city. Out post can only be built on earth like worlds.
Terra forming a planet to an earth like world involves importing alien organisms to a planet. If it is an ice world you need terra forming gasses. Simply buy a docking ring to put on the planet and a buy a landing pad and install it on the planet by pressing the install icon while docking with the docking ring it will cost 10,000c.
If a hot world, you will need liquid nitrogen and alien organisms. But
Alien organisms cost 1000c to 3000c per one and they expire at a rate of one per 1000 every 30 seconds. Some times you can go to a commercial hub and buy terra forming nano machines.
They work on any planet but cost 5,000c each.

Ch 5

Ships come in different shapes and sizes. Each class comes in 3 different sizes. Fighters come in 4 sizes micro light 20 cargo 10MW , light 30 cargo 30MW, medium 50 cargo 50MW, Heavy 70 cargo 80MW.
Freighter ships come in three different classes. Small at 1,000 cargo space 85MW, Medium at 2,000 cargo space and 90MW, Large at 3,000 cargo space at 100 MW.
Star drifters are a special kind of ship and an alien artifact. They have an ion reactor. And harvest ions from stars to fuel them they were the first artifact to be reversed engineered and their technology widely used by the human race. Each one starts out with 100MW of power and 500 cargo space. Solar cells can be added to aid in ion collection and ion tanks can be added to hold more fuel.
Battle ships vary widely from sector and faction. So do cargo haulers, as do all ships.
Ship upgrades are shields, weapons, cargo hold, reactors engines thrusters and fuel tanks. These then have sub components that can be upgraded with alien artifacts and high tech parts, Jump drives and jump drive capacitors. Shield capacitors increases the number of hits your ship can negate. Armor plates are good a upgrade because they increase your ship hit points, out side your ship on your armor plate you can add energy absorbing paint and solar cells.

CH6

Collecting fuels involves buying solar cells for the out side of your ship or a magnetic harvester. Once installed at the equipment center of a planet you then fly out to the nearest start and slowly your ships fuel tank fills up. Solar cells cost 1,000 each and depending the size of your ship you can add more. Each cell adds one unit of fuel per second. A magnetic harvester or scoop adds 100units of fuel per second for a cost of 10,000. You can also divert fuel to your cargo hold and vise versa in the fuel tank icon. Or a small bar that is your ships fuel gage.
A reactor will burn fuel at a rate of one unit of fuel per minute while moving a special speed of 600 but that changes depending on reactor type. To go at 600 you click on your reactor and enter the engineering menu and press the over boost icon and your ship will move faster. And you exit by choosing exit or x. On the flight screen you can choose to Cruise mode unless you select over boost your ship will go a top speed of 300 and you consume 1 unit of fuel every 1 hour in real time. While traveling at your ships normal speed it will move at a speed of 80 and use one unit of fuel after one day of real time.
Ion reactors come in three types small which will use fuel in over boost 1u per min at 20Mw+ then medium which is 1u per 2min 40Mw+ and large at 1u per 3 minutes 60 MW+ on over boost.
Fusion reactors are more efficient they use h fuel of a rate of 1u per 5 minutes on small At 100MW, medium is 1/2 unit of fuel per min at 120MW, Large is 150MW 1 unit of fuel per min. But if you add a plasma focus fuel consumption is cut in half or power is doubled.
Antimatter is a rare fuel that is very expensive It can cost as much as 1,000 credits per unit. It can only be found at rare space stations that do research. To convert h fuel into antimatter it will require the Matter reverse polarizer (MRP). Which is a rare find but both may be salvaged off of old alien wreckage. But the occasional Pirate Station may have the Rare Advance Antimatter reactor (AAR) upgrade for a ship and it has a MRP built into it. The AAR uses one unit of fuel per 10 minutes on over boost at a whopping 5,000MW of power.
Antimatter power plants make power at ½ unit of fuel per minute on over boost at 500MW for small. Medium is 1unit of fuel per min at 1000MW of power. And Heavy reactors Make 2000MW at 2 unit per 2 minutes.
Then there is the rarest type of energy of all, The Zero Point Energy Module or ZPM for short. It will make 10,000 to 100,000 MW of power and does not use any fuel. Inside are bosons that fluctuate and a sensitive material of diamond boron crystal with Zinc Sulfide converting the flux it into electricity But most engines use the exhaust of a reactor to move forward so a Electric Engine is necessary. It will cost 100,000 for an electric engine and the ZPM will go for 200,000 to 2,000,000.
So fuel is not a problem if you have the right equipment. The Sol System is a great place to start out. It has asteroids to mine and all the gas giants have gas mines that sell h fuel for 100 credits. Earth has nearly over 20 billion people so h fuel is in such high demand it will sell for 400 credits. But if you fly close enough to the sun you can get free h fuel for 100% profit. You can take the trade gate to Venus from Earth, then from Venus to mercury. From Mercury your solar cells or magnetic harvester should start working normally.
But around planets like Venus and Earth the rate for solar cells is less Venus is cut to 2/3 and earth to 1/3 mars works at a rate of ¼ collecting h fuel the asteroid belt the solar cells and scoop work at a 1/8 rate and Jupiter at a 1/16 so unless you have a large ship with both solar cells and a scoop the amount is near unnoticeable. But once your fuel tanks are full you will notice your cargo bay fill with h fuel.
So why isn’t h fuel cheaper? Because it is cheaper and faster to just buy h fuel from Jupiter and take the trade gates back to Earth. Because no amount of ships can put a big enough dent in the h fuel trade. Earth has to keep massive reactors going and h fuel from Jupiter is preferable because it has deuterium and helium 3. Earth produces over 100 trillion watts of power all from fusion power plants working over boosted to meet demand.
So earth consumes about 500,000 units of fuel yearly. Just to run it’s traffic and regular trans ports. The reactors consume an additional 1,000,000 unit’s every year. That run an equivalent 100,000 Gigawatt power plants. But fusion power is so advanced that every building on earth has a micro fusion reactor that works long periods and that make a distributed power network.

CH 7

You should be careful while firing your weapons. Although you can buy energy weapons if you over boost your reactor your weapon will use the full charge of your laser capacitors and then unit of fuel to provide a quick boost of fire power.
So you use one unit of fuel every time your laser and shield capacitors are drained. So you might buy your self some time to escape if things get bad or just pummel your opponent in space. But you might find your fuel tanks without any fuel if your not careful. Over boosted reactors should be only for people that are experts on the game and have solar cells and a scoop and over sized fuel tanks with geometric expanded capacity where a complex geometry increases the capacity of your fuel tanks.
Ship scanners are up grades that increase the range of the ship. With it you can see ships farther off on the worded display. It give a list of dockable, important, loot, ships. Or just like free lancer. Arrows show your nearest enemy and a targeting system the same as free lancer. But it should be possible to us joy sticks in this game, and game pads. As well as a mouse. So every one can play it.
A starting scanner has a range like that in free lancer. Higher ranges are 1.5x 2x 3x 4x. Your navigation map shows you the entire system and asteroids to mine as well as hidden space stations you visited. Just like in free lancer but on the galaxy map you can select different systems to jump to if you equipped a jump drive.
Alien scanners are special in that they reveal an entire sector so nothing is hidden not even jump holes to pirate bases and more. Some times a pirate may not have room for all their loot so some will get left behind from time to time or a ship will be shot to bits leaving cargo for you to tractor in.
Tractor beams are the same in freelancer but you can buy new more powerful upgraded tractor beams that beam up to 2x farther up to 4x farther away.
CH 8

The factions of the game include the European Union, The African Union, Chinese Commonwealth Japanese Republic. The United States, Russian Federation. HPEC (Hydrogen Producing Energy Civilizations) is the group of middle east states that control Jupiter and other gas giants. Other factions are the South American Confederation, Australian Republic, Canada Commonwealth, Icelandic States. Lesser factions are not all included here but consist of Pirate factions, R&D Factions and commerce factions like Wal-Mart and K-Mart, Target and more. There is even an in Game McDonalds chain as well as Taco Bell and Papa Johns.
In system corporations in the milky way galaxy are General Electric, Ford, IBM, Advanced Micro devices, Synthetic Foods, Luxury Foods. Then there are Mitsubishi, Mazda, Fiat, and so on and so forth. The companies listed are very stable to buy stock and pay a steady dividend.

CH 9

Ships engines include the Ion engine only for ships with ion reactors it has a top speed of 300. Then there is the particle accelerator engine that has a top speed of 350 but a plasma focus can be added to go 400 and is compatible with ion, fusion and antimatter reactors. Then there is the Plasma warping engine that has a top speed of 500 and works with fusion and antimatter reactors. Then the photonic engine that works with antimatter reactors only and has a cruise speed of 600. Over boost increases cruise speed by 300 on all reactors.
It is important to note that electric engines do not have a cruise speed but a variable speed from 0 to 1200. And they do not use any fuel because of the ZPM.
Thrusters are quick little boost of power like in freelancer when fighting at a speeds of 80 they give quick burst of thrust up to 200 for the time it takes a thruster to discharge.
Thrusters range from thruster with a drain of 200, deluxe have a drain of 165, heavy 155, Advanced thrusters have a drain of 133.
Ion thrusters are more efficient with a drain of 120, deluxe ion thruster drain is 100, heavy Ion thruster drain is 90 and Advanced Ion thruster drain is 50 out of a rate of 1000 unit of thrust. All at a speed of 200.
Plasma thruster drain is 120 but at a speed of 250, Deluxe Plasma thruster drain is 100, heavy is 80 and advanced is 50 at 250.
Jacketed Photon thrusters are an advanced light driven thruster that never discharge thrust energy, instead the energy comes from engines so using them shuts your engines off.
The Jacketed Photon thruster has a thrust speed of 200, deluxe 220, heavy, 250, And advanced is 300. If your ship has an advanced Photon thruster you may set your cruise speed though your Advanced photon thruster. This enables your ship to not use any fuel while cruising. But if on over boost it will use fuel every time your energy weapon run out of energy and shields go down It works like shield batteries in freelancer.
Also if you buy a hydrogen flow cell at 10MW and you have an advanced photon thruster the hydrogen flow cell will move your ship at all speeds and will not consume any fuel what so ever. An engine mod of variable photon thruster speed will enable you to never need any fuel and move at any speed of 0 to 300. On the down side Advanced Photon thrusters are expensive 100,000 credits and Hydrogen flow cells can only be bought on House Battle ships and military space stations at a cost of 50,000c
Technologies are grouped in several main classes of research, Agriculture, Industry, Energy, Commerce, Physics, Chemistry, Quantum Science. Each class has branches that relate to goods, ships, ship components, food, farming, power plants, reactors, fuels, mining, population housing, mass transit, water works, osmosis power water works, and venues, stats and miscellaneous topics.

CH 10

Each ship has a status menu where certain stats can be upgraded by various add on items. Some are general such as upgrade nanites. These little machines add up grade points that can be generally assigned to any stat to increase it. For example they may add to your ships ability to regenerate, add hit points or shield strength, maneuverability, reactor power, capacitors (weapon, shield, jump drive, thrust capacity, and how well your ship is at using specific weapons, accuracy, defense, and so on.
Special items such as micro chips add to your ships data base to identify unknown objects and alien lore. But you can pay to have any item identified in the equipment doc for a fee of 100 credits per item.
It helps to add certain chips and components or paint because they make your ship resistant against radiation, found in some asteroid fields. Not only radiation but other status effects such as cruise disruption and electro magnetic pulses that may disable weapons or shields.
Special equipment add special stats that negate damage by so many hit points verses micro meteorites. These cause small bits of damage flying though them because they interact against your shields making them resonate at your shields frequency, thus penetrating your shields and banging against your hull. The faster you go through them the more damage they cause. So going at a speed from 1-10 cause no damage, 11-20 1 unit of hull damage per 10 seconds, 2 units of damage per 10 seconds at 21-30, and 3 unit of damage per 10s at 31-40. 41-50 is 4 damage per 10s, 51-60 5 damage per 10s, 61-70 speed causes 6 hp damage per 10s and so on. 10 damage per second at a speed 100 and above and 20 at 200 and above and 30 damage a second at 300 and above.
Radiation damage is different, causing a constant 1 damage per second, regardless of the speed of your ship moving through space. Certain relic ships may be radioactive but have radiation weapons that do direct hull damage to enemy ships at a rate of 10-100 per shot and use little energy.
Other weapons include primitive guns that are self powered but use ammo. The ammo has a thermal material that is easily ignited like gunpowder but burns quicker and hotter as hot s sever thousand degrees Fahrenheit. The recoil runs the guns and the ammo is tipped with resonate shield crystals. Making them the most dangerous. And all though they cause little damage 10 hp per hit they come in packs of 1000 at a price of 2000c.
Some relic ships have old ion fission reactors and consume uranium 233, 235 or plutonium MOX Fuel at a slow rate of 1 unit of fuel per day at 200MW. And Have ion fission engines that go as fast as 350 at cruise speed. These are well shielded and are relatively safe. But if you take too much damage with your ship equipped with a ion fission reactor will cause gradual lose of hit points.
Lots of repair nano machines are needed if you use this lost ancient technology of old earth. But on the bright side you can cheaply mine thorium and uranium 238 which your engine can equip out side them by clicking the engine icon and slide how much goes over to your ion fission engine. These then will breed thorium and uranium 238 into uranium 233 and plutonium that can be sold for 300c to 500c per unit. They are perishable items but not if your ship has both ion fission reactor and engine equipped. The engine will breed both at a rate of 10 units of thorium and uranium 238 per second while your ship has cruise selected. Each engine has a breeding capacity of 1000 unit of uranium and thorium and or can even convert waste into MOX that some old industrial space station use.
Some planets that are near small dwarf stars that were altered to be brighter with gases and phosphors and do not have the solar radiation to sustain fusion reactors and ion collectors, or anti matter power. Solar cells and solar thermal plants can be made.
Water on earth class planets is valuable for farming and has other purposes. It is also cheaper to mine hydrogen from gas giants. But they are rare in dwarf star systems. So the inhabitance of these worlds my resort to using old earth technology and build ion fission reactors and Ion fission breeder reactors.
But dwarf solar system are more likely to have ancient relics or alien artifacts. This makes them ideal world for research and to power outpost with rare artifact called Zero Point Energy modules. They really help your outpost grow into a thriving prosperous city.
The outpost will automatically start generating credits at a rate of 10,000c per minute. But increasing slowly by 1000c per every 10,000 population on your world. You can even play the stock market from outpost you build and buy bonds and even start a bank account that pays one percent interest per day.
Corporations may view your space sector if you own one and decide it is a good place to do business. They may build trade gates and jump gates in your space sectors and will even pay you rent to build venues on your world. The legislation or ordinances you select on your world will greatly determine how many companies come to your world to develop it. And any corporation on your planet will immediately become fully friendly on your id marker.
Be careful the legalized gambling ordinance accessed from your city screen may attract pirates to your planet. It may even become a pirate planet. But you will become friendly to pirate factions on your world.
Neutral companies and groups will move to your planet with the tourist ordinance and the Allow Alien artifact ordinance. Then your world may become a galactic trade and research center. Your ID marker will immediately change to friendly to all houses and corporations and neutral to everyone else including pirates. Pirates will be neutral to you because of your tolerance of alien artifacts. These items are banned in some house systems such as the United States. This house considers them a danger it’s citizens. Some have been known to be deadly or carry rare pathogens marked with the common symbol of three hexagons.


CH 11

On a note this game is loosely
based on freelancer, X series of space games and Vega strike and various other space games I played. The controls need to be simple and intuitive like freelancer and to make all the more complex actions as simple as humanly possible for people to play the game. It is also important that the ships are easy for players to see and that all docking rings, stations are easy to see and use and stand out from the back ground. It also helps if the graphics look good but not at the expense of game speed and processing and in game fighting and playability. And all the little item in the game have icons or fingernails picturing the item you are buying.
This game’s minimum requirements should be no greater than 1.2ghz processor, 256mb or ram and 64mb graphic accelerator and taking about 2gigabytes of memory on your Hard Drive. Also it would seem that smoothing of ships,stations space nebula, and worlds could be done with a variable sliding bar in the graphic settings and the setting should have a low setting to maybe go as low as 900mhz 128mb ram 32mb graphics for fast fluid game play and 16bit to 32 bit graphics. And a graphics setting for better This game should go with out requiring a game disc. I hate searching for the CD code. It would be easy to just use an I agree to terms of use like age of empires but not require the CD to run so that my CD is not scratched unnecessarily and my game might last a few years or longer. Using a CD all the time is trouble some and time consuming.
In order to prevent copies from being made just use a internet code similar to when you start a new email those squiggle letter word number things from yahoo and so on when you start a new email or for some post on web pages. If the computer had to solve one for each and every copy it would not be able to solve it. Or the game should have a squiggly set of letters and numbers with a line through them at random for one to decode each and every time a person tried to make a copy and only one copy at a time. So mass copying will be difficult. This is just the short of my game concept thank you for your time.